Talking The Future Of Gen.G & Seoul Dynasty With Arnold Hur

Gen.G had a rollercoaster of a 2018. After rebranding from the KSV Black team, Gen.G went all out in esports ventures throughout the competitive landscape. Sometimes coming up strong, sometimes coming up behind, and sometimes somewhere in between, it was a year of growth for the organization that included creating a new training facility and HQ.

It wasn’t all great for Gen.G in 2018. After a leading start to the year, both Overwatch and League of Legends teams fell short in their respective seasons. And despite the Heroes of the Storm Gen.G team taking the Heroes of the Storm championship (HGC) at Blizzcon, it was soon announced that Blizzard would be shelving HGC for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, with 2018 behind them, Gen.G is getting ready for a bigger and better 2019 and beyond. We caught up with Chief Growth Officer Arnold Hur to talk about everything, including the new facility, new team acquisitions, Seoul Dynasty in Overwatch League Year 2, and more.

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Twin Galaxies: Seoul Dynasty was hyped up in 2018 as the best team in the world hands down after a strong start in Overwatch League Year One, but the team fell off a bit, coming in strong to Pre Season and coming just shy of top 3s in the first stages before slipping down to 8^th and then 10^th in the last stages. What is the organization doing to set realistic expectations for their fans in the lead-up to season 2, or do they now believe that they have the roster and set-up to really take their place as the best in the world?

Arnold Hur: I’ll say right off the bat, it was a lot of falloff in terms of expectation, from the players and organization and the fans, ultimately we didn’t deliver what it looked like we would. We all realized that we really fell short. What’s nice and sort of a silver lining to all of this is that now I feel expectations are too low for us. When you look at how underrated our team is now, I think it’s kind of shocking how quickly everything changes. That said, I think the more important thing is that the team is now hyper focused on being unified and having a single identity coming into the next season. I feel like the changes that we’ve made as an organization on the roster side with new recruits and new unified coaching staff will speak volumes as we enter into the second season of Overwatch League. Overall, we were all disappointed with the turnout, but nobody was more disappointed than the players, and it taught us how to come together and overcome our problems. I think you see that in the fact that there’s not a lot of drama or bad news coming out of our organization. We simply gave it our best shot, try to do the best for our players, and now we’re setting up for a new approach on how to tackle this season and do better. We feel really good about it.

[HAPPY NEW YEARS]

2019년 새해가 밝았습니다! 팬 여러분들 새해 복 많이 받으세요! ?‍♀️?‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/Md2Tae9wea

— Seoul Dynasty ? (@SeoulDynasty) January 1, 2019

TG: Speaking of new recruits, you have had players like Michelle, Marve1, and Jecse join. How are they adjusting to the new team? Are they finding their place well among the roster?

Hur: They have been finding their place and then some! A lot of our new recruits have been performing at a fantastic level where basically we have a pretty healthy rivalry going on between the old guard of Seoul Dynasty like zunba, ryujehong, Fissure, and tobi and the new folks. And it’s a thing where the talent involved is pushing everyone, old and new, to be better. We’re talking learning different skillsets, taking different approaches to the game, learning new responses to certain playstyles, and listening and applying coaching advice well. So right now, we feel that the team is bringing the best out in each other. Even though some of these players aren’t as well known, they’re performing at a really high level, and I think people will be really surprised to see our new style and how much versatility we have in our roster depending on who we play.

TG: That brings up an interesting point. When you look at certain traditional sports, you see these deep benches full of players with different skill sets that they can substitute out based on what the situation calls for. It’s sort of like having a left-handed pitcher in baseball to change up the rhythm of throws and overcome certain batters. Do you feel like Overwatch League is approaching something like that where you’ll have these deeper rosters of players that can sit on the bench one week, come back in the next week, and help the team adapt to various scenarios?

Hur: Absolutely, and I think if you look at it from a logical perspective, there’s two factors that contribute to this. One is the rapid meta changes. Anytime the meta changes, you need people that can adapt to it. People will adapt at different paces and in different ways. So that naturally lends itself towards teams being able to adapt fast and well. The other factor is the character additions to the game. Overwatch and the League will continue to be a place where new characters come in and players have to figure out what they can do, how to use them, and how to play against them. As the game changes, players are only going to have so much time to practice a handful of characters. So you might have one DPS who focuses on projectile characters, while another focuses on more hitscan heroes. Sometimes a player can do both, but ultimately everyone only has a limited amount of time to really understand everything about a character and what they need to do with them. And due to the format of the League, the changing meta, and the new characters coming in, it will continue to go in the direction of the baseball model where the depth of the bench matters.

TG: With the Overwatch Pacific Challenge having happened December 29, what is the team hoping to prove, coming out of the gate ahead of the season with Guangzhou Charge and going into 2019?

Hur: The Seoul Dynasty team has been extremely excited to debut their new style, roster, and approach to competition. I also think it helps to cultivate a very exciting rivalry for us and our fellow Asian-Pacific teams. We’re already growing a friendly rivalry with Guangzhou and the Pacific Challenge was great opportunity to share what we’ve been doing and bring against a team we can really enjoy playing against. I think it was the first of many match-ups that’s going to be really fun for fans to see.

TG: How is the Gen.G planning on bouncing back from their League of Legends Worlds performance (having been knocked out in groups), given that as the defending champions, expectations ultimately fell through?

Hur: So obviously we were super disappointed about being knocked out in group stages, but to be honest, that’s something the casual fan won’t look at. I think it’s important to point out that Gen.G still got into Worlds 2018. Looking back, I can say that because of roster restrictions and timing, we weren’t able to change up our roster the way we wanted to be ready for the season and meta that we anticipated. The coach had a lot of ideas and directions he wanted to implement, but it just wasn’t meant to be at the time. Even with that restriction, we were still able to improve every day and make a fantastic gauntlet run that got us into Worlds. If somebody told me that I’d have a good enough team to get into Worlds, that’s worth being happy about. The biggest thing I think people underestimate about our team and LCK in general is that every single team that LCK including us realizes the meta has changed. It’s a much more aggressive playstyle right now, meaning the tactical playstyle we were known for won’t work as well. And you see that in terms of our roster moves. We brought in Han “Peanut” Wang-ho who has a much more aggressive playstyle and incredible shot-calling. He’s helped our team to be more aggressive and decisive, and I think that moves like that have given our team a fresh, revitalized identity. We’re taking a long-term view on this and we feel really, really good about where we’re headed, not just for this upcoming season, but for 2020, 2021 and further on.

TG: There was a lot of nervousness about Blizzard taking so long to announce HGC, and then the worst came to pass when they shelved support for Heroes of the Storm. Gen.G has had a good go in Heroes, winning HGC in 2018. What is the organization doing for those players?

Hur: For right now, Gen.G is looking at ways to support the team as we figure out what the next steps should be. At the time, we just tried to make sure we were staying ahead of what the new meta would be, but of course, we’re always looking and trying to figure out what will happen. We can only control what’s in our hands. We’ll be figuring this out and working through ways we can support the team, but it will be a little bit before we know for sure what the next steps are.

TG: Despite some setbacks, another recent positive development is that Gen.G established a greater presence in streaming, including a recent team-up with DESKER. Are there plans to set up streamers with time slots that draw in Western fans, or other measures to bring more Western fans into the fold, or are they primarily streaming for Gen.G’s Korean fans?

Hur: Both. We actually have a dual HQ approach to esports. I think we’re one of the few organizations that can credibly say we’re both local and global. We have our Seoul facility that we’re really excited about where we have some great streamers working to grow and engage the community more and more. And it’s just going to grow as our teams get more used to being in the Seoul home office and market and engaging with the community there. What’s more, we’re building another facility in Los Angeles where a lot of our American teams can operate, the first of which is our competitive female Fortnite team, which is really doing a great job at helping us launch our new facility and office. That’s going to be going fully up and running within the first quarter of the new year. So, we’re moving at a pretty great pace at building a lot of community initiatives in both Asia and the US.

TG: Let’s talk a bit a bit about these esports facilities. They’ve been built up to have everything the players need to play, live, work, and relax. How is Gen.G working with these facilities to help players maintain a balance between work, play, competition, and life?

Hur: I think a common misconception about players and organizations is that it’s the organization pushing players to do things like 16-hour grinds. Scrim blocks are pretty reasonable with us. They start at 11AM and then maybe end at around 6 or 7PM and we try to maintain a comfortable balance of blocks with a break in between. The issue with the grind is that if there’s a mistake somewhere or someone feels they’ve messed up or haven’t locked something down, players often do that on their personal time. You get this situation with players that are dedicated and can sometimes overcommit and spend too much time practicing because they ultimately want to be the best. From our side, we decided to try to provide the best we can for our players in terms of the facility, even down to finding the most ergonomic equipment (chairs, desks, and controls) to help promote comfort. We also try to make sure that the scrims aren’t over scheduled. We also go out of our way to approach care for our players inside and outside the game. That includes a sports psychologist on deck in case any of our players needs someone to talk to, and we supply one-on-one personal physical training for every single one of our players. We firmly believe that if you have a healthy body and a healthy mind, healthy results will come of it. Obviously not all of our player take this offer, but there’s a good contingent of players that take this on. It’s something we love to see and a level of dedication that extends to both our Seoul and US facilities.

TG: Going off of the development of US teams and facilities, how do you feel about the US-side growth of Gen.G as a whole?

Hur: We feel good. One of the things that we realized fast is that our League of Legends and Overwatch teams have a lot of amazing global fans. It’s one of the most passionate fan bases in Korea, but we also have some of the most passionate fan around the world, and so we decided that if our fans are going to be global, then our organization needs to be global as well. From that logic, the facility in Los Angeles made a lot of sense. We’re continue to grow our presence in both Korea and the United States, especially as we eye gaming franchises across the competitive board. The Fortnite team is just the start of something great in addition to everything else we have going into the coming years.

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With the new season of Overwatch League Season 2 just around the corner on February 14, 2019, League of Legends’ new season beginning shortly, and games like Fortnite here to stay, it would appear Gen.G is planning well for the future. Will it all pan out? It remains to be seen, but if their past tells us anything, Seoul Dynasty and Gen.G will continue to field teams to keep on your radar.

You can follow Seoul Dynasty on Facebook and Twitter, as well as Gen.G for all of the latest esports activity coming out of the organization.